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Discourse & Society 29(1)

Hilde van Belle, Kris Rutten, Paul Gillaerts, Dorien van de Mieroop and Baldwin van Gorp (eds),
Let’s Talk Politics: New Essays on Deliberative Rhetoric, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John
Benjamins, 2014; viii + 208 pp., US$135.00 (hbk, ebook).

Reviewed by: Mariano Dagatti, Department of Social Sciences, National University of Quilmes,
Argentina; Conicet, Argentina

Let’s Talk Politics explores the multifaceted relationships between rhetoric, citizenship
and politics, using the study of rhetoric to engage with ‘an understanding of citizenship
as a political “practice” that is related to identification with, and deliberation on, public
issues’ (p. 3). This exploration of ‘citizenship-in-context’ is consistent theoretically with
the so-called ‘rhetorical turn’ in argumentation studies, the shift from the idea of rhetoric
as the art of persuasion to rhetoric as a way of understanding how language functions in
the establishment of social relationship and social identities in particular.
The volume confronts classical rhetorical concepts and theories with current political
developments such as globalization and multiculturalism and the emergence of new
democracies. This is a necessary confrontation in the current state of the field, but from
a global perspective this audacity offers modest results, due to the topical and methodo-
logical breadth of the attempt. The volume consists of two parts. Part I introduces theo-
retical perspectives for a rhetorical approach to politics, ‘by confronting existing theories
with new developments in the realm of politics and, more generally, in the world of civic
affairs’ (p. 6). The more extensive Part II focuses on practice by presenting rhetorical
analyses of the political enterprise on different levels and in different contexts.
The theoretical part is remarkable. The three studies compiled are not only significant
contributions to argumentation studies, but also open up avenues of further research in
the fields of deliberation, official rhetoric and multiculturalism. In Chapter 1, Kock
explores how the concepts of deliberation and proairesis help to offer a ‘broad picture’
of Aristotle’s thought on rhetoric, ethics and politics, since practical reasoning is con-
cerned not with truth but ‘decisions on action’ (p. 13). Defending the value of delibera-
tion, Kock’s virtue is to make explicit the democratic – a fortiori, rhetoric – tension
between the exaltation of the value of pluralism and the inevitable recognition of the
existence of dissent. These key concepts and Aristotle’s discussions of them, Kock
argues, offer inspirations for modern theories of ‘deliberative democracy’, citizenship,
argumentation, debate, and the public sphere.
The focus in Villadsen’s Chapter 2 is on official apologies understood as public state-
ments of regret presented in the name of collectivities (nation states, governments, or
religious institutions) for wrongful acts. Within a cross-disciplinary theoretical frame-
work that can account for the social and ritualistic functions of the genre, leaving aside
‘narrow’ speech act theory, the author understands official apologies as a combination of
the epideictic perspective with a deliberative one. In this direction, she explores how offi-
cial apologies could be an instantiation of rhetorical citizenship; that is, ‘a site of crafting
public norms’ (p. 38). In Chapter 3, Kraus asks how rhetorical argumentation will be pos-
sible on a worldwide and cross-cultural scale under the impact of globalization and politi-
cal correctness. In that sense, he is committed to the development of a ‘multicultural
argumentation’ which provides ‘pragmatic solutions’; that is to say, a rhetorical one. As
Book reviews 109

Kock, the author considers that any solution to the problem of multi-cultural arguing in
our age should combine the search for agreement and a reasonable solution and the space
for tensions and disagreement.
Part II, presenting rhetorical analyses of the political enterprise on different levels and
in different contexts, in contrast far less coherent than the former. Although the selection
of cases is interesting and despite the quality of individual chapters, the diversity of issues
and perspectives detracts from its consistency. In Chapter 5, Sayenko focuses on humor in
political discourse as an important factor in establishing a communion between the
speaker and their audience, specifically by focusing on its prosodic features: changes in
voice pitch, intensity, speech rate and pauses. In turn, Luckie and Edwards’ Chapter 7
examines, in the so-called ‘age of apology’ (p. 116), British Prime Minister David
Cameron’s Bloody Sunday apology and its reception. Their analysis reveals his rhetoric
to be an exemplary apology that strengthens reconciliation efforts within Northern Ireland.
Degano’s Chapter 10 analyzes strategic maneuvering in National Security Strategy
reports, crucial documents within the repertoire of US presidential discourse, published in
2002 and 2010, during, respectively, Bush and Obama Administration. In Chapter 11, van
Belle analyzes The Bridge from a rhetorical point of view; more specifically, she traces
how Obama is represented and how the structure of the book supports the construction and
evolution of Obama’s image. Chapter 12 is given to Ornatowski’s examination, within the
framework of constitutive rhetoric, of a historical case of ‘language shaping social order’:
the parliamentary institutionalization in terms of how Polish members of parliament recon-
stituted the institution of ‘parliament’ through their discursive practices in the months fol-
lowing the transitional parliamentary elections of 4 June 1989. Argumentation and debate,
said the author, shape ‘institutions’ in the same way that institutions shape argumentation.
Let’s Talks Politics is aimed at specialists in political argumentation and rhetoric, espe-
cially working in a pragma-dialectic framework, although it might be of interest to social
scientists, especially political scientists as it addresses significant cases of political argumen-
tation. Its main contributions are, from an empirical point of view, the variety of cases and
dimensions considered; from a theoretical one, its reflection on links between argumentation
and rhetoric. However, it is harder to define more specifically how this compilation of works
by researchers of different institutions, profiles and purposes contributes to the advancement
of the field. Except for the issue of official apologies, there is no real connection between the
theoretical and the practical part, but only certain common references. Although the theo-
retical part raises remarkable questions on how could argumentation and rhetoric help to
think on deliberation, official rhetoric, multiculturalism, the absence of a final chapter that
links the various case studies to this issue deprives the reader of a clear conclusion.

Shaul R Shenhav, Analyzing Social Narratives, New York: Routledge, 2015; xiv + 104 pp.,
US$32.95 (pbk).

Reviewed by: Sandra CS Marques, Centre for Research in Anthropology, University Institute of
Lisbon, Portugal

While the study of narratives has embraced an increasing range of forms of storytelling
in the social sciences, its theoretical and analytical methods have been imported in